The DCEU started with a noble goal that was seemingly started for all of wrong reasons. After Warner Bros success with the Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy, they turned their eyes towards the growing Marvel Cinematic Universe and decided that they needed to copy them. The result was a series of movies that will go down as some of the most divisive in the comic book genre. The saddest thing about them is that the vision of DCEU architect Zack Snyder was realized due to studio involvement and a family tragedy which resulted in Snyder leaving Justice League and Joss Wheadon taking over to finish things up.
In a new interview with the LA Times, Warner Bros. chief executive Kevin Tsujihara talked about the future plan for DC films at Warner Bros and that the idea of a big, over-arching plan is pretty much dead.
“The upcoming slate, with Shazam, Joker, Wonder Woman 1984 and Birds of Prey, feels like we’re on the right track. We have the right people in the right jobs working on it.
The universe isn’t as connected as we thought it was going to be five years ago. You’re seeing much more focus on individual experiences around individual characters. That’s not to say we won’t at some point come back to that notion of a more connected universe. But it feels like that’s the right strategy for us right now.”
To me, this sounds like they’ve finally got it figured out. Marvel got very lucky with their MCU project. The chances of it working were pretty slim, but they managed to get all of the stars to align for it. Meanwhile, look what happened to the Universal Monsters Dark Universe. It was dead before the first weekend’s box office receipts were in for Tom Cruise’s The Mummy. Taking this approach gives Warner Bros the freedom of trying new things and testing out lesser-known characters without any single film having too great an impact on the universe at large.